


Child's Play

by jer832



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 10:16:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2021262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jer832/pseuds/jer832
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He watched her kick that old battered can, or chunk of stone, or maybe one of his hearts, along the sidewalk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child's Play

 

 

 

 

"Child's Play"

  
“That was my mum on the phone.”

The Doctor uncrossed his legs, pushed away from the wall of the planet’s substitute for a chips shop, and pocketed what was left of the strange but tasty snack.

“What does the oncoming slapper want now?”

“Oi, Doctor! That’s my mum!”

“What? She slapped me, didn’t she? And it hurt!” He grinned despite the immediate need to cradle a throbbing arm.

“One of my mates just got engaged.” Rose stuck her hand in the Doctor’s pocket, took his last three chips and finished them off, then started on ahead. He watched her stop and poke at something just off the sidewalk, rolling it underfoot a bit. When she started moving again, she kicked it along ahead of her in earnest, controlling it with her feet. If he challenged her, the Doctor thought with a grin, Rose Tyler would keep up that kick the can kids' game all the way back to the TARDIS.

“Mum said the ring is wicked huge!” Rose was calling back over her shoulder, “a two-carat black star sapphire surrounded by diamond chips!”

He watched her, the way her agile body skipped back and forth, anticipating the object’s trajectory despite its jerky momentum, her feet expertly directing it as it skittered and hopped over the cracks in the pavement. She looked childlike and inelegant, and at the same time uninhibited and graceful and dazzling, and so very Rose. The Time Lord stretched those seconds out of time just to watch her kick that old battered can, or chunk of stone, or maybe one of his hearts, along the sidewalk.

“–inviting everyone!” Rose hollered, “I said I wasn’t sure ‘cause I know you don’t like domestic.”

That last word blew the Doctor out of his reverie. What had he missed while he was…um, concentrating on getting back to the TARDIS, yeah that was it.

“So, what d’you think, Doctor,” Rose shouted, “I do kind of miss it.”

“Rose!” he called to her. “Would you like to go back to Earth and visit your mum now?”

Wait. Who just said that?

“I mean… if you are thinking about having a regular sort of life, maybe for a while–”

Where did that come from?

“–with a proper, non-Ricky type boyfriend? And a house and….stuff?”

He was a masochistic old sod this time around, wasn’t he?

But it got Rose's attention, and him a long inscrutable look, and started her back to him, that silly-looking old hunk of metal slip-sliding and skipping between her dancing feet. When she reached him, Rose toed the can into the air and, with a little hop that resonated all the way up her body and into his, caught it atop one foot. Holding it stationary about ten inches above the sidewalk, Rose gave him that fantastic peek-a-boo tongued grin of hers; and if it was one of his hearts that she had been kicking along the sidewalk before, the Doctor was surely in trouble now, because he’d just felt the second one leap up into his throat.

“You mean do I want a fiancé and an engagement ring and–” and here Rose giggled as she tried to do the Doctor’s smooth baritone and Northern accent– “beans on toast?”

“Oi, don’t you make fun of me, Rose Tyler.”

“You know you love me when I do.”

“Yeah, sure, I love you when you do.” He threw Rose a quick manic grin.

“Doctor, you’ve taken me to all these amazing times and places. I’ve met Charles Dickens, a seriously flirty tree, and a bitchy trampoline. I was in 10 Downing because of you!”

“And you almost got killed in 10 Downing because of me.”

Rose dismissed the Doctor with a rather rude sound and the wave of a hand. “I told you to do it, remember? It was scary, yeah; but scary’s ok.”

“Well, isn’t it jus’ like me t’pick up a crazy ape with a death wish,” the Doctor grumbled, crossing his arms across his chest.

“An’ jus’ like me,” Rose countered, “t’get picked up by a genius alien who’s denser than a black hole.”

“A black hole!” The Doctor planted two fingers under Rose’s chin, tilted her head up, and looked into her eyes. “Well, Rose Tyler, in spite of that bein’ an insult ‘n all, I am impressed.”

“Not such a stupid ape then?”

“Rose–”

She stopped him. “That’s the point, see. Maybe I wasn’t stupid when we met, yeah, maybe I just didn’t know much and was waiting for you to come to teach me. You’ve given me the chance to learn, Doctor; you’ve given me…”

Rose pulled away and looked down with a huff. She rolled the battered can back and forth a couple of times, then looked up at the powerful Time Lord, her nineteen-year-old eyes arresting his nine-hundred-year-old ones.

“Doctor, why would I settle for a house when I already have bigger on the inside? Why would I want beans on toast when I can get you to take me for chips anywhere in space and time?”

"And you’ll never find a timeline, my oh-so-superior Time Lord, where I’d take an ordinary little black star and an ordinary life instead of billions and billions of white and blue and yellow stars, and worm holes and dark matter and nebulae, and everything else you’ve shown me, and so many more places to visit--"

Rose grabbed the lapels of the Time Lord’s leather coat and pulled him down. Just about eyeball to eyeball she had the Doctor, so close his eyes almost crossed.

"--Or ever leave the designated driver who’s the most fantastic person I’ll ever meet... AND a bloody great plonker for thinking I’d ever want to!”

The Doctor heard–actually heard!–the heavy black shackle that Jackie’s calls always left around his guts go bloink (or maybe it was just him falling back on the can when Rose let go his jacket), and before his enormous Time Lord brain could analyze, the Doctor’s lonely, besotted hearts convinced his feet that remaining this close to Rose Tyler and not making an arse of himself was child’s play.

“Such incredible blue stars you've shown me.” Reaching up, Rose ghosted her fingers over the Doctor’s eyes, and he blinked them closed reflexively. Her hand cupped his cheek, fingers drifting through the short-cropped hair above his temple. As her thumb stroked back and forth along his cheekbone, the Doctor’s eyelids opened languorously and he watched her.

“I love you when you’re relaxed and your eyes are happy,” Rose told him. “Like now. What can we do so it happens more often?”

“Don’t really know there, Rose. When I’m involved, things tend to get scary.”

“Already told you: scary’s ok, Doctor.”

The Doctor’s heart-stopping sapphire blue eyes blazed down at her and into her, and maybe… yeah, just maybe at last, for her. For one moment, Rose's eyes flared with her own burning. Then, toeing the battered old can off the sidewalk, she flipped it, spinning on its axis, into the air, popped it off a knee, and caught it on her other foot. Not bad for a girl out of practice! Surely the TARDIS had a hacky sack somewhere.

Surely any next move had to be the Doctor’s.

A genius alien who was, apparently, denser than a black hole and a bloody great plonker (in this regeneration at least) still had things to learn, especially after hundreds of years of running; and for some reason, some unfathomable and miraculous reason, Rose Tyler was crazy enough to want to teach him. The Doctor watched the moment that Rose’s eyes had gifted him more times than a Time Lord had reason to.

“Scary's just ok, Rose Tyler?" He took a free and easy breath and finally allowed, “Scary sounds fantastic!”

Rose’s head shot up in surprise and she lost her balance; then the Doctor’s hands were at her waist, gently steadying her. His foot was beneath hers, keeping the can from toppling, and Rose imagined how amazing it would feel without any shoes or socks between them. Or skirt, or–. She grabbed her concentration back to keep the can and everything else of hers reasonably steady as he held her.

“You better keep your equilibrium, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor said. “And you get just this one warning.“ His foot pressed up into Rose’s, and he whispered against her cheek darkly, “There’s something I’m gonna steal.”

“You really think you can, do you, Doctor?”

“Yeah, Rose, I do.”

“You think you’re so impressive.”

The Doctor pressed his foot up against hers again. “I am so impressive, Rose Tyler. Maybe you need to be reminded.”

“I don’t know, Doctor. You might just smash the can altogether with your big clunky feet.

“Oi, they’re not clunky!”

“And then you’d probably get frustrated and blow something up.”

“I would not.”

“Yes, you would.”

“Would not.”

“You so would.“

 

 

 

 

* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=44987>

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  This story was written for lillibetm3 's Three Little Words ficathon at livejournal. By the end of the story, the Doctor must have said those "three little words". Prompts by jessalrynn: Nine/Rose, sidewalk, stationary, sapphire
> 
> * * *


End file.
